


After Adamant SFW

by ParadiseIsntPerfect



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Feels, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 10:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11690145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadiseIsntPerfect/pseuds/ParadiseIsntPerfect
Summary: Inquisitor Atishavir Lavellan has given more of herself to her role than she imagined possible. Everyone else seems only to see her as The Inquisitor, Herald of Andraste. It's enough to make her wonder if anyone else can see her for just herself at all. One scholarly mage proves to her that he sees her for who she really is, even if no one else does.Art commissioned by me from Heathergreyfeather on Tumblr/dA.Spoilers for Trespasser DLC inside.This is the same exact prose as After Adamant, but with the smut taken out for those who might not want to read it.





	After Adamant SFW

 

She was so weary. So very weary. After assaulting the fortress in the Western Approach, after being flung unwillingly into the Fade just to keep her compatriots from falling to their deaths, after leaving Stroud behind, after making the decision to protect the Wardens by banishing them, all Atishavir wanted to do was sleep. Or be held. Both would be best. And even after the slog back to Skyhold there was more to do. She had to make sure her inner circle didn’t hate her for what she’d done, had to deal with Cole’s panic about being bound by another mage, and still there were prisoners to judge.

It had been an option in some folks’ minds to make Erimond Tranquil, but Tish couldn’t even think of it for more than a moment without feeling sick to her bones. Instead she’d imprisoned him permanently, despite the disapproval of two of her favorite people in this damned Inquisition. And then Ser Ruth…Atishavir had felt bad for the Warden, but there was no message she had meant to send by banishing the organization from Orlais and Ferelden in the first place; she’d only sought to protect them from Corypheus again. And so when Ser Ruth begged for death, Tish could only give her the death befitting a true Warden: the Deep Roads.

Too much death had happened lately, too much death and suffering and it felt like the dirt of it all would never leave her skin. Atishavir wanted to feel like a _person_ , not like the Inquisitor, not like some Herald to a god she didn’t believe in. Not even First to her Clan, at the moment. Finally able to grab a stretch of hours alone, she trudged up the stairs to her room, rubbing her aching neck with a weary hand. At the top of the stairs she saw that her fire was down to embers. With a sigh Tish walked over and knelt to prod it back to life, adding a few logs to its fuel, before she sat down on the rug in front of it completely.

The heat of the flames eased her muscles a touch, and their light mesmerized her attention. One by one Atishavir began to take the pins from her hair, elegant ironbark tucked into golden braids. Bit by bit, her plaits loosened from her scalp and she drew them farther down, across her shoulders so that she might undo them completely. So engrossed was the Inquisitor by the dancing flames and their soothing heat on her skin that she didn’t hear footsteps on her stairs until their owner announced his presence.

“ _Ma vhenan_.”

Startled, Atishavir jumped slightly and her gaze darted up and in the direction of her guest. With a breath she relaxed again, her fingers still tangled in one half undone braid. “Solas.” His name was a breeze of air across her lips, as his presence eased her even more than her fire did. He approached with a thoughtful look and a softness in his gaze that most never got to see. Tish knew she was lucky to have found him amidst this madness. She hummed in pleasure when he sat behind her and began undoing her other braids, his deft fingers massaging her scalp as he worked.

As time wore on in comfortable silence Atishavir’s hair was freed from its confinement, falling in fire-lit waves of gold around her arms and shoulders by the time Solas was done with her. His hands lingered on her shoulders, squeezing gently and ministering to the tense muscles of her neck. She relaxed against him, leaning her head back and onto his shoulder. Tish’s eyes had slipped closed at some point and she could feel but not see when Solas moved to kiss her forehead.

“ _Garas_ , let’s get you into bed, _ma vhenan_. It has been a long several weeks.” Tish felt the rumble of Solas’s voice through her back where it was pressed against his chest and she smiled.

“Mmmmmmf.” Her eyes remained closed and she made no move to comply with her paramour’s suggestion.

With a sigh, Solas shoved his palms gently against Atishavir’s shoulders. “Come on, Atishavir, you can’t very well sleep here.”

She rolled in his embrace, wrapping her arms around his waist, as she sleepily muttered, “Only if you’re my pillow.”

Solas rolled his eyes though Atishavir couldn’t see it and moved his hands to her waist, forcibly – though not painfully – dragging her up to a standing position with him as he rose. Tish grumbled against his chest, but held on and stood on her own two feet once they were upright, her nose buried in his shirt.

Solas smiled down at her, lifting her face with a hand on her cheek. “Come, _vhenan_ , sleep will do you good.” Tish smiled in return and pushed upwards on her toes to kiss him, softly at first, and then more intensely when Solas’s hand slipped from her cheek to the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair. She moaned against his mouth when his teeth grazed her lip, inciting him to increase the passion of their kiss even more.

Breaking their kiss for air after long, heady moments, Atishavir swore, her need a visceral, pulsing thing. “Just take me, Dread Wolf damn it! Or may he take you!” Her fingers were clenched in the front of Solas’s shirt and her stare was focused only on his eyes as her heartbeat pounded in her neck and ears. They had been at this romance for a long while now and she had never felt this way about anyone else. She wanted to live fully, with him, and she knew he didn’t want to make her promises they couldn’t keep. He disliked the Dalish and she was proudly so, but Solas still somehow found a way to love that about her too. Tish just couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t take that leap with her, considering how much she knew he wanted to, based on everything else they had said and done to each other.

Solas seemed to hesitate though his forehead was still pressed to hers and Atishavir began to draw away, her stomach sinking. Was there something about her that put him off? She didn’t think so, but it was a worry. With all the built up stress from Halamshiral, running around Southern Thedas to save people and close rifts, and then what happened at Adamant…. She needed this, needed to forget for a while that she was anyone but herself. She was not some Herald to a shemlen Maker or his bride; and as much as she loved and was proud of her history and her People, she wanted to forget for a while that she might just be the chosen of a Creator too. Was it not enough to just be a person anymore?

“ _Ma vhenan_ ,” Solas said softly, his hands firm around her arm and waist. From lips that knew him only as Solas it was a welcome relief to pretend for just a moment that she knew the whole truth. That he would not be taking her under false pretenses if they fully consummated their relationship. And how he wanted to! All of this was not new to him, but it had been millennia since he’d had anyone in his life who was not simply an agent, a pawn on one level or another. But even the thought of using Atishavir in any way to which she wasn’t fully cognizant sickened him. He knew that what he must do would likely destroy her world, everything she held dear, but he could not waver. Not when he could also offer her People and the last remnants of his people that still survived the chance to be what they were meant to.

“I don’t need forever, Solas. I just need right now, with you,” Tish scoffed, trying to mask her hurt and sadness. She just felt so tired, so very tired of it all. Unable to help herself, she pressed against him and kissed him, hoping to convey her aching need without words. “Please,” came out breathlessly when the kiss ended, barely audible but her lover heard it nonetheless.

If she had not sworn to the Dread Wolf, to him…he could keep his false promises to himself that he would take it no further than they had before. But Solas knew himself, in the back of his mind, he could not resist her, not when she looked at him like that, not when his own need pressed hot and hard against his thigh. He loved her. It was impossible to realize, but true. She reminded him of everything good he had destroyed, everything he hoped to restore. In a perfect world perhaps he could share that with her too, but the world was never perfect, was it? Perhaps Atishavir was right, perhaps they ought to take what fulfillment and joy they could with the time they had. When she went to move away again, her face falling, no longer meeting his gaze, Solas pulled her back as she had done to him months and months ago on her balcony. Molding his lips against hers he wrapped his arms around her body, so delicate compared to his, and tried not to think too hard about the regrets he would have in the morning.

* * *

Sometime later Solas awoke with a start and found he could not breathe, as though the darkness of the room was choking him. Atishavir lay sound asleep in his arms, which held her tightly against his bare chest. The moonlight caressed her high cheekbones through the open balcony doors; the cool night air barely penetrated the mountain of furs she preferred to sleep under, but it cooled his hot skin as the realization of what had happened fully hit him.

_What have I done?_

The panicked thought drove him to extricate himself from Atishavir’s bed, making sure she was still tucked beneath her furs before he paced her room. Feeling as though he might scream, might do something more rash than what had already been done, Solas stalked to the balcony and stood against the railing, his hands splayed across the cool stone. A slight noise – or was it merely a sensation? – to the left of him turned his head and Solas found himself unsurprised to see Cole perched against the wall on top of the railing.

“Aching, hurting, healing heat and need, kisses soft and sweet, then frantic and sharp.” Cole’s ice pale eyes met Solas’s, unblinking. The spirit’s voice was soft as usual, but his words seemed to pierce right through Fen’harel’s chest. “Why do you fear and hate? What you did was beautiful. It helped. I can’t help her like that, but you can. Except you don’t.”

With a sigh Solas dragged one hand down his face before answering the spirit. “It’s more complicated than that, Cole. It is a lie. It shouldn’t have happened at all. It will only make the things to come worse for her and it’s my fault. Again.” He had done what needed doing, but that did not mean that he wasn’t to blame for Arlathan, or for this either. The fact that it was Atishavir who had initiated the evening’s activities, who had practically begged for them, did not factor into his calculations of guilt.

“But why?” Cole clearly did not understand; wasn’t helping someone the goal? Especially someone you loved. “You love her, and she loves you. Light as sunlight in summer, piercing green leaves, better than cool water or the taste of first snowfall. Better than baby halla and a child’s first magic.”

Solas turned away, unable to bear what Cole’s words meant about Tish’s feelings. He hadn’t meant for this to happen, but as it happened so often, things seemed to move without his control, against his bidding.

Whether or not he would have stopped had Solas spoken, Cole continued on, the tone of his voice changing, reflecting a different person. “She is the sky of the Fade, impossible, soft, ever present, warm, strong, but gentle too and so, so delicate. A butterfly in its cocoon, spring’s first new leaf. Mythal’s smile, but brighter, more real.”

Staring out across Skyhold below, sleeping but for the guards on duty, Solas did not want to face his past or his future, but he couldn’t very well avoid that alone or with Cole beside him. It was in the nature of Compassion to help, even if the helping left bruises and ripped off scabs along the way. And Solas could never find it in himself to turn Cole down, not when they were alone. Not really. “I don’t think Mythal would appreciate being considered less real, Cole. And her smile…” But Cole was right about that. Atishavir’s smile brought a response from him, unbidden, that he had never really had when he would see Mythal’s in the ancient days. It had been so long, perhaps his Inquisitor was more real than his old friend now.

“I haven’t met her yet. I wouldn’t know.” Cole spoke so nonchalantly but even Solas sometimes startled at the things the spirit said. He gave the boy a sharp look while Cole shifted his position, sliding his feet out from under him so he was now seated on the railing instead of perched atop it like a strange bird. Solas was about to say something when Cole turned his gaze intently towards the sleeping Inquisitor. “You walk in her dreams even when you’re not there.” A strange smile flitted across the spirit’s face and then was gone in a moment. “The sticky kind of happiness that’s not found in a kitchen, hot breath, hot air, wet, whimpering, wistful….”

Solas looked away, his cheeks slightly pink. He hadn’t thought he still had it in him to blush, not at his age. But perhaps he had needed to hear such things from Cole before he could believe it when Atishavir said them. He still had his burden to bear, his mission to finish, but how could he throw away something so precious when he hadn’t even expected to find it in the first place? It would end, he knew, this happiness would end someday soon, sooner than his lover expected, he was sure. But while it lasted….

“You should be happy, Solas. You are happy, fighting so hard good turns to hurt even though it still feels good,” Cole said, standing now on the railing next to the elf. It wasn’t precisely clear how he’d moved there, but the boy was a spirit. Such things weren’t abnormal. “Being unhappy makes her unhappy, but how can how you feel change how she feels?” Cole was confused, a common occurrence even before Atishavir had made the choice to push him towards spirithood. Solas appreciated her trust in him in that decision, and Cole seemed happy, fulfilled.

“When someone you care about is hurting or sad, you will empathize their pain, particularly when you cannot make them feel better.” Solas paused. That was exactly the position he was putting Atishavir in, wasn’t he? On top of everything else, on top of his mistakes with Corypheus, on top of the Anchor, he was making her suffer because he could not accept the happiness they had together for what it was, without thinking of how things would go wrong. She deserved better than him, but she seemed determined, and so he would try to give her better than what he had been thus far. He turned to head back inside, but paused one last time to say goodbye to Cole. “Thank you, Cole.”

"I'm glad I helped." And then the boy was gone with a smile, walking over the rooftops and humming an odd tune. Solas smiled too, and headed inside, back to warm furs and a warmer lover, still asleep.


End file.
